


Repeat Me

by korik



Category: Black Widow (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 01:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/korik/pseuds/korik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>life-and-other-lies asked: WinterWidow Prompt. The thing that always baffled the Red Room techs was just how many times the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow found each other even after being scrubbed from each others memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repeat Me

It wasn’t that they didn’t forget, it wasn’t that it didn’t hurt to feel a strange sense of emptiness in the abyss, the remaking that undid and restrung them up like dolls to dance like cheerful marionettes across an idyllic stage. It was that some things were too strong to isolate, no serum powerful enough, no stretch of time long enough to make the lone solider and the elegant lady with a kiss that slayed nations to forget.

Maybe it was the charisma of a great storm in the sky that bristled with a skin tingling sensation, the ache that happens when one is amongst so many, but at the same time so _keenly_ _alone_ and suddenly you meet someone that _fits_ , echoes the hollow sound in your chest. Maybe it was that the Widow found herself back again, wandering aimlessly, staring, haunting old retreats as if to grasp at pieces that they didn’t want her to remember. Maybe it was the times when he was torn from the tank, gasping and freezing his ass off, hacking and clawing at his throat for air with only one hand and a strange woman would always be there to cradle his head, wrap him up, and speak words that fractured into dreams.

She is the red and hot that you feel as your limbs freeze and blacken with the frost, and he is cold and winter that hides and slowly collects to drown out all sound. They could not change it, again and again - she woke, he woke. The same path, the same cycle.

The test results were obscenely repetitive, almost choreographed, even after they had threatened his life. He always snuck in at the same time, the same way like he was a well practiced actor who had all the lines memorized, all the steps unassumingly method acted out with sure understanding, all the responses detailed, and yet no idea he was repeating himself. Crawling over the sill into her private room, brushing aside the heavy fabric that kept the cold confined to the glass. Of course she always left it open, not even as an afterthought, not expecting, not afraid of the chill of metal that started at her cheek with the blistering snap of the chilled Russian winter, delicate digits that had been painstaking manufactured and remade as the years dragged on.

She was _so beautiful_ \- they thought perhaps if they made her repulsive to him. That he would not care, would not see, would not _long_ after the sun had gone down.

They were wrong.

The subject showed no signs of caring as they altered the way he perceived her, heard her voice, her very genetics they tried to smear so when he kissed her it would burn, not realizing what he loved was the spirit that cannot be touched, and _cannot be forgotten_.

He loved the chill that she gave him when she locked gazes with him, the power and strength that let corded, fine muscle that belonged on a dancer ripple and hold. The way she was stubborn, smart, funny - they could never take that kind of voice and alter it, no clay to be modeled, no Tabula Rasa to toy with. Take that texture to the very life that kept him sane away from him.

He had no other sense of identity outside of the Winter Solider, and the Winter Soldier was nothing without the Widow. The Widow had become nothing without the Winter Soldier rearranging the high waist black dress she wore when she acted out her parts, the little trimming of lace and veil that fell over the side of her face and broke up the little false tears that trickled down her cheeks. The way she didn’t _have_ to beat his ass in to win, that she would laugh and give him a choice, face streaked in black from her mourning, her lips curled with something like enjoyment, unimpressed, calm, serene.

_«So which’ll it be? The right hand, or the left hand, Captain?»_

He was so _handsome_.

They tried the same with her, gave her better targets, different housemates. Thicker, stronger, smaller, more delicate. More humorous, more submissive, more dominant.

They gave her to _him_. He was sweet, he was kind, but she could never stop turning her head for someone on the street who never showed. She never stopped smiling at jokes that were never said, trailing a certain set of scars over Alexis’s shoulder that were never there. She even had a strange joke that the man never understood - something about running away and having tons of big, fat Russian babies outside of the influence of others, in the woods. Outside of the embrace of Mother Russia.

She was sad when he died, but the way she stood by her husband’s grave, with a lonely, suited stranger nearby in the rain, holding an umbrella over his head, you would almost think…

No. The breath she held was let go. She could not cry. The gaping ache in her chest had returned, and she once again seemed to know what it was to be lonely, to be watched, to be unseen, and regardless of it all _happy_.

The pattern would repeat itself.


End file.
